S3 Savage 4: trials and tribulations

Well to start I haven't had much success with Diamond's S3 Savage4 32MB video cards....the largest problem thus far has occurred while using one of these cards in conjunction with Abit's KT7E mb..... here are the problems that I have encountered.

Upon reboot the system hangs with a black screen and the mouse pointer. There are missing letters on the desktop icon's, in the programs listing and gaming is impossible.

Here is a break down of the system:
Abit KT7E Mobo
AMD Duron 850MHz cpu
Amazor PC133 256 MB dimm
Sound Blaster 256 Live
Sohoware 10/100 network card
Maxtor 20.4GB hd
Delta 48x Cd-drive
Diamond S3 Savage4 32MB vid card
The OS is WIN98 SE, currently I have removed the offending video card from the system and replaced it temporarily with an old Matrox G200 Millenium 8MB vid card. Since I have done this there hasn't been a single video glitch at all. I was wondering if there are any known issues between the mainboard and the vid card. This problem is very frustrating for me. I've tried everything that I can think of. If anyone has any ideas it would be greatly appreciated.

Warp Hunter

I am on my second card right now because it did the same thing as yours did so I swapped out cards and then put S3 back in. It worked this time but only for 1 day.
I fried the card trying to get it to work.
Just got the new one in yesterday and it would boot but only in 16 colors, I then went to install drivers and it could not find a CAB file on the factory disk.
When I did find the cab file (forget where) it would boot up in a very dark screen.

Moral of my story is find right drivers and insure AGP is setup correct in bios.

still not up and running with S3 card.

good luck and let me know if you find a solution.

firedog

I found a solution alright, I returned the video card to the shop that I bought it at and paid the difference for an ATI Rage Fury Pro 32MB vid card w/tv ins and outs. The card setup without a hitch and the system is up and running fine and dandy. Anyways if anyone else has had any problems with this vid card and fixed the problem I'd like to know what you did and how everything is now.

Warp Hunter

Well it would appear that I'm not the only one here with S3 video problems.... gee go figure. As I noticed in the S3 Virge DX/GX (375-385) forum topic that dbb494 has a few problems with these cards as well. Anyways it has happened again to myself.

I've been using a 16MB AGP Diamond S3 Savage4 video card in a system that I use as my network server for 2 years now. Up until 2 nights ago there wasn't a problem with it at all. But then I decided that it was time to update the drivers, DirectX and the bios chip on the vid card. The bios update was the first to be done and everything went off without a hitch. I installed the updated drivers which I obtained from Diamonds site. That went fine as well....then I installed DX8, this is where the problem began. At first the system wouldn't boot into Windows at all, then I got around that problem, but the system wouldn't go into any other resolution other then 640x480, 16 colours. Now this seems rather odd to me considering the fact that not more then 15 minutes to prior to this I had my resolution set to 1024x768, 32bit colour. I really didn't need to update anything due to the fact that my server is just a basic system. But I haven't upgraded any of the hardware drivers since I built the system. This is very puzzling to me that within 2 weeks now I've had problems with 2 different systems with the same manufactured vid card. I no that it couldn't be a bad batch of cards, due to the time span between the purchase of these cards. If anyone has any ideas let me know.....it would be greatly appreciated.

Just a note....the system that I'm using as a network server is this....
FIC 503+ Mobo
AMD K62 550Mhz CPU
2 sticks of 256MB PC100 SDRAM, Kingston Tech.
Yamaha 740XG sound card
Matrox 8MB G200 Millenium vid card (was a 16MB Diamond S3 Savage4 vid card.)
SohoWare 10/100 nic
Dlink 10/100 nic
Panasonic 48x cdrom
2 Maxtor 30.7GB hdd's
OS WIN 98SE


Warp Hunter

This sounds like a case of buggy drivers. If you have an older version of the drivers or can find some, then that's probably your only ticket out of this jam. Poorly written drivers can kill a company, fortunately ATi cleaned up it's act ;)

I hate diamond! had the same problem about 6 monthes ago and couldnt get around it for a month. I think in the end I used some windows 95 drivers(instead of 98se) Now I am having another problem. see my post